2014年1月14日星期二

Most weekday nights, I cook a dinner for one, for myself. And because it's difficult to cook dishes with rice (The Chinese Style) for one, I normally settle with western food, i.e. salad, sandwich, pasta etc.

I love creamy pasta, even knowing they could contain higher percentage of fats. I try to give myself some leeway, by telling myself at least I prepare the sauce, not using the pre-made ones.

Ingridients (for one):

A clove of garlic

Two slices of bacon (I chose streaky)

Pasta of your choice (in this case linguine)

Ten stalks of asparagus (I could have chose kangkung to save my pocket if I live in Malaysia!)

50ml of Cooking cream

Cheddar cheese (as much as you like)

Salt and pepper

Methods:

Cook the pasta to Al Dante (as suggested by the package).

Meanwhile, cut the bacon into small pieces and fry on your non stick pan. I do not add any oil as I am already using streaky bacon. If you chose back bacon, you may want to fry on some butter for better flavour.

Chop the garlic and prepare your asparagus.

When the bacon is almost done (almost crispy), throw in the garlic.

Cook the asparagus with the pasta at the last half to one minute of the pasta.

Meanwhile, add the cream and shredded cheddar cheese into the pan and stir. Let the sauce simmer and thicken.

Drain the cooked pasta and asparagus and run them through cold water immediately to stop cooking further. Asparagus is crispy and tasty to cook within a minute. (I always keep my mobile phone around, the timer comes in handy)

Add the pasta into the pan and stir to make sure the pasta is coated with the delicious sauce. Flavour with ground pepper and salt.

To make my meal more interesting, I did add some asparagus (with cream and cheese sauce).

Chickpea sandwich with asparagus

I made 2 servings, so I get to keep one more in the fridge =)

I used muesli bread from Sunshine as that is what I have left in the kitchen. You can use wholemeal bread, or walnut bread... Or anything I would say, but I personally think white bread will not taste so nice.

2014年1月7日星期二

My sister's life long ambition is to tick off every single UNESCO Heritage Sites in the world. This is why we are not going to Bangkok without visiting this ancient city, and take a picture in front of the UNESCO sign. She will not let us skip this part of the itinerary! :P

The ruins

It reminds me so much of Siem Reap, the temples and ruins, the colors of the bricks, the headless Buddha statues... This place was destroyed by the Burmese back in 18th century and Siamese Kingdom has moved out from there ever since. And never rebuilt.

Buddha head in the tree

This Buddha head is said to be found from the ground in one of the excavating events. It is so precious because there are only a few left in the ruins now, the archeologist placed this at the tree and the tree grows around it, protecting it ever since.

Headless statues

The complete statue at far

Tourists and the ruins

The ruins (waited so long for it to be cleared from crowds)

It is said that each of the deceased King of the kingdom is buried under a stupa. So each stupa you see in the site, representing one deceased King from the past. At least that is what we heard from the tour guide from Taiwan tour group.

Much to my sister's disappointment, there is no UNESCO sign, anywhere in the ruins, not outside the ruins, nor the entrance. No where to be found. That makes her collections incomplete. Visiting is one thing, keeping a copy of evidence is another. Maybe she will have to be back when they finally put up a sign.

I am slightly disappointed too, because Ayutthaya is one of the most mentioned attractions, one of the most recommended, but the restoration and preservation of the site is not as well done as Siem Reap. Maybe that is why the entrance ticket for foreigners are only 50baht.

After the fruitful sunflower farm trip and ancient city, we're all hungry. It's been hours since we first had a proper meal in our stomach so my sister told the driver we want to have boat noodle.

The name of boat noodle comes from the time when vendors are selling them in the boat along the canals and rivers. Along with the development in modern days, the boat noodles move to the land.

Boat noodle

The serving of boat noodle is so small, we all had two bowls each. Like any other Thai food, it is sour and spicy, always appetizing! I've ran some checks, it seems like there is cinnamon in the soup too.

Our driver also taught us the Thai way of eating the noodle, which is to go with the deep fried pork skin! Healthy eater might be turned off by this, but our family adore this so much, my parents have to buy one pack to snack along the way.

Boat noodle with deep fried pork skin

Ayutthaya is our last stop of the day. Our driver wanted to buy Roti Sai Mai home for his kids, he told us his kids love it. We've heard about it too, so we decided to try them as well!

Roti Sai Mai

The skin and the fillings are sold in separate packet (50baht a set that can feed more than 6 person). The skin, which is very similar to our Poh Piah skin is slightly salted in taste. While the fillings, resemblance of Long Xu Tang is extremely sweet. They are not delicious to eat separately, but when paired up, they're just nice and fragrant. There must be santan in it too.